25 Female Directors You Should Know

Another list of the one-hundred best films, another list of a hundred movies directed by men. Yeah, yeah, it took a long time for female directors to get the chance to take the helm of feature films (and even longer for them to be taken seriously), but the recent list published by the BBC certainly does suggest something about the great movie titles we continue to applaud over and over again: women, like in other art forms, are generally shut out of the rankings in favor of the well-established men who are long considered to the serious, most prestigious artists working in the medium.

Women directors often get slogged off as not producing heavy-hitting, serious films like their male counterparts. There’s a certain feminine quality to their work, some might suggest, that results in more emotional, introverted explorations as opposed to “larger picture” or “universal” themes (which always sounds like code for “girly shit”). The truth, however, remains that there are plenty of female directors doing their damnedest to get ahead in an industry that systemically works to shut them out. Those who manage to step behind the camera blessedly offer a welcome diversity in terms of worldviews, narratives, and artistic sentiments. These 25 women, presented in alphabetical order, are hardly the only accomplished female directors; nor is this list meant to suggest they are the best women to step behind the camera on a given project. But they have brought a collection of films that entertain audiences as much as they challenge them, and they range from low-budget indie flicks to studio-backed, box-office smashes.

Andrea Arnold

The English director began her acting career as a teenager, but received acclaim for her first feature behind the camera: the 2006 drama Red Road, for which she won a BAFTA award. Her second film, Fish Tank, followed a troubled East London teenager who has an affair with her mother’s boyfriend (played by Michael Fassbender). Her third film, a moody adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, notably featured a black actor in the role of Heathcliff. Arnold’s films have brought her attention of American filmmakers, and she’ll be directing two episodes of Amazon’s Transparent for the Emmy-nominated show’s second season.

Kathryn Bigelow

Bigelow is the first woman to win an Oscar for directing a film, although she has a full resumé of acclaimed feature films under her belt before 2009’s The Hurt Locker. Known primarily for her stark action films, Bigelow typically blends elements of many genres; Near Dark brought together vampires and a Western setting, Strange Days is a dystopian sci-fi thriller, and the controversial Zero Dark Thirty an attempt at cinematic narrative journalism. Despite her Oscar nominated films inspired by the War on Terror, the crime thriller Point Break may remain her most iconic movie.

Jane Campion

The New Zealand director is one of the four women to be nominated for an Oscar for directing a film (an honor she shares with Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow, Lina Wertmüller, and Sofia Coppola) and the first (and only) woman to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, which she received in 1993 for The Piano. Campion’s films tend to focus on sexual politics, particularly female sexuality and seduction, and feature a moody, dreamy aesthetic that carries through her oeuvre.

Lisa Cholodenko

The openly gay Cholodenko likes to examine sexual fluidity, particularly among female protagonists, and the way sexuality compliments — and, at times, burdens — human relationships. The director also manages to bring out incredible performances from her actors, particularly Ally Sheedy and Patricia Clarkson in High Art, Frances McDormand in Laurel Canyon and the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge, and Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right.

Martha Coolidge

After working with Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studio and directing her first film, 1976’s Not a Pretty Picture, she found breakthrough success with the ’80s cult comedy Valley Girl, which also made a star out of Nicolas Cage. Her most acclaimed film, Rambling Rose, is a Depression era drama that earned its stars, Laura Dern and Diane Ladd, Oscar nominations. Her HBO biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandrige, which stars Halle Berry as the pioneering actress, earned Coolidge an Emmy nomination for direction. In 2002, she became the first female president of the Director’s Guild of America. In recent years, she’s directed fluffier fare like Material Girls and The Prince and Me, and turned to television, directing episodes of CSI, Weeds, and Psych.

Sofia Coppola

The daughter of Oscar winner Francis Ford Coppola, Sofia Coppola naturally entered the world of filmmaking with one foot in the door (although she probably hopes you forgot about her disastrous turn as the doomed Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part III). While her famous last name hasn’t been a disadvantage, her artistic vision is much different than her father’s. Her lens typically focuses on young women of privilege, trapped within stifling environments and longing for self-expression. Often, that expression turns unhealthy and deadly.

Julie Delpy

Like many other women on this list, Delpy started as an actor (a profession she still takes on in her films, as well). She’s received two Oscar nominations for co-writing, with Richard Linklater and her co-star Ethan Hawke, the walking-and-talking pictures Before Sunset and Before Midnight, but it’s her pair of neurotic romantic comedies (in which she co-starred with Adam Goldberg and Chris Rock, respectively) that display her talent for quippy dialogue and thoughtful examinations of modern relationships.

Claire Denis

French director Claire Denis is the daughter of a French civil servant, and spent her formative years in colonial West Africa, an experience that would influence her work. White Material, in particular, follows a French woman in an unnamed African country at the brink of civil war whose steadfast rejection of her own privilege and its effect on the world around her ultimately brings her doom. Denis, working within several genres, attempts to identify classical French traditions and the way they fit — or don’t — into contemporary French society with her stark, sometimes disturbing films.

Ava DuVernay

DuVernay is one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood following her breakthrough studio feature Selma. While she was passed over for a deserved Oscar nomination earlier this year, she’s made up for it by making deals with Oprah and Marvel (who needs that little gold statue anyway?). Fans of DuVernay’s first feature, Middle of Nowhere, were well aware of her talent upon its 2012 release. The searing emotional drama, which features Selma star David Oyelowo in a supporting role, earned DuVernay an award for direction at that year’s Sundance Film Festival as well as the John Cassavettes Award at the 2013 Independent Spirit Awards.

Debra Granik

Granik’s two feature films portray female protagonists on the brink. In Down to the Bone, Vera Farmiga plays a New England housewife whose drug addiction only worsens upon her retreat into rehab, and she struggles to maintain her composure and the life she has built for herself. In Winter’s Bone, Jennifer Lawrence plays a teenage girl whose only chance for survival in the crime and poverty-ridden area of the Ozarks is to fight back and protect her family in the wake of her estranged father’s independence. Granik not only brought Farmiga and Lawrence their first meaty roles (with the latter getting her first Oscar nomination for her performance), but she also crafted strong willed women who find their strength in unexpected places.

Mary Harron

Harron’s breakthrough feature shined a light on the misandrist icon Valerie Solanas, who penned the infamous S.C.U.M. manifesto and attempted to assassinate the art world’s leading figure. But Harron’s biggest success is the adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ controversial novel American Psycho, which satirizes ’80s materialism and features an incredibly dark and humorous performance from star Christian Bale. She followed that up with two more films that focus on celebrity and infamy, the biopics The Notorious Bettie Page and The Anna Nicole Story (the latter being a Lifetime original movie).

Amy Heckerling

While she hasn’t had a big hit since 1995’s Clueless, you can’t hold much against her. I mean, Heckerling only directed two of the most iconic teen comedies in a fifteen-year span, with Fast Times serving as a crazy talent incubator that introduced the world to Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates, Nicolas Cage, Eric Stoltz, and Cameron Crowe (his screenplay was based on his novel of the same title), among many others. With that strong of a debut, it’s not a shock that she was tapped for the first Vacation sequel, and then she knocked it out of the park once again with the hilariously inventive Look Who’s Talking.

Nicole Holofcener

Woody Allen’s influence on Holofcener is notable — her stepfather, Charles H. Joffe, produced many of Allen’s films, and Holofcener worked as a production assistant on two of Allen’s films — but her comedies of errors are much less misanthropic and carry a much more nuanced touch. Each of these films focus on relationships between multiple women, who navigate their complicated, interesting lives without necessarily focusing on romantic pursuits. (A bonus: the always wonderful Catherine Keener shows up in a starring role.) In addition to her films, Holofcener has directed for television, including episodes of Gilmore Girls, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, Enlightened, Orange Is the New Black, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

Kasi Lemmons

Lemmons started as a character actor (her best known role is probably as Clarice Starling’s FBI academy classmate in The Silence of the Lambs), but her dark Southern gothic Eve’s Bayou established her as having an artistic vision all her own, which she followed up with the equally bleak and brooding drama The Caveman’s Valentine (both starred Samuel L. Jackson). Her third film, Talk to Me, was a critical success and featured a top-notch performance from Don Cheadle as the real-life radio talk show host and political activist Ralph Greene, with Chiwetel Ejiofor portraying his manager, Dewey Hughes.

Penny Marshall

The former TV star and sister to director Garry Marshall became a legend behind the camera in her own right, first directing comedian Whoopi Goldberg in her first big-screen comedy performance (Goldberg had starred in Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple the year before). While Jumpin’ Jack Flash was not a critical success (and only a modest commercial success), her follow-up, Big, was an unequivocal hit, earning an Oscar nomination for its star, Tom Hanks. Her third film, Awakenings, was also well received by critics and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Marshall’s biggest smash hit, however, was the female-centric sports dramedy, A League of Their Own, a fictionalized retelling of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that still remains one of the best and most entertaining movies about baseball ever made.

Mira Nair

The Indian director got her start directing documentaries following her graduation from Harvard, focusing her lens first on the Indian-American cultural experience (which she would later examine with her 2006 adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s acclaimed novel, The Namesake). Her first foray into narrative filmmaking, Salaam Bombay!, earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film, and her subsequent films, Mississippi Masala and The Perez Family, focused on the hyphenated American experience. Her musical film Monsoon Wedding, which follows the players and traditions in a Punjabi Hindu wedding ceremony, is arguably her best and most acclaimed film.

Kimberly Peirce

Peirce’s debut feature, Boys Don’t Cry, is a groundbreaking film that depicts the life and death of trans man Brandon Teena that earned two of its actors, Hilary Swank and Chloe Sevigney, Academy Award nominations (with the former winning her first of two Oscars). The low-budget film’s subject matter proved controversial, and she revealed in the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated that the MPAA attempted to censor the sex scenes between the film’s female stars but were fine with the gruesome violence at the film’s climax. She continued to push buttons with her follow-up, Stop-Loss, which remains one of the few dramas about the war in Iraq that received critical acclaim.

Sarah Polley

The Canadian actress, who gained prominence as a child star in the series Road to Avonlea, is perhaps best known in the States for her roles in Go and Zach Snyder’s remake of Dawn of the Dead. Her directorial debut, Away From Her, earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay (its star, Julie Christie, was also nominated for her performance). Her second feature, Take This Waltz, was a modest success, particularly for its charming performances from Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, and Sarah Silverman. Her most acclaimed film, however, is the documentary Stories We Tell, in which Polley turned her camera onto her own family’s complicated and surprising history.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

Like many other women on this list, Prince-Bythewood got her start in TV as a writer, working on series like A Different World, South Central, and Felicity. By the turn of the millennium, she moved into film, writing and directing the romantic drama Love & Basketball, which proved popular with critics and audiences alike. She followed suit with her 2014 drama Beyond the Lights, which, like its predecessor, provided fully actualized protagonists in an industry that is rarely explored with emotional depth on film.

Lynne Ramsay

Following the critical success of her debut feature Ratcatcher, whichfocused on the bleakness of the impoverished communities in 1970s Glasgow as seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy, Ramsay continued to depict desolate subject matter with stark, colorful examinations of psychological flaws. Samantha Morton stars in the sullen drama Morvern Callar, a film that depicts the surprising actions of a woman who grieves for her boyfriend following his suicide. We Need to Talk About Keven, starring Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller, and John C. Reilly, tackles the feminine failures as deemed by onlookers who point a finger at a beleaguered mother following her son’s violent rampage upon his classmates.

Dee Rees

Dee Rees’ debut coming-of-age feature, Pariah, follows its protagonist’s sexual awakening and realization of her identity as a lesbian, a theme she touched on in her HBO biopic about bisexual blues singer Bessie Smith. Rees’ two features both focus on the intersection of black femininity and sexuality, offering a complicated look at her characters’ identity. But beyond the identity politics, Rees has proven, with just two films under her belt, that her visual eye is just as stunning as her ability to craft emotionally complex protagonists whose struggles represent a timeless and universal pursuit for self-expression and acceptance.

Kelly Reichardt

Reichardt’s films take advantage of their sparse, typically rural settings, and her characters are often themselves wanderers who are searching the land beneath their feet for a direction home. In each of these films, Reichardt explores themes of solitude, friendship, and alienation from society, the latter proving to be a complicated experience that her characters all encounter in varying ways.

Lynn Shelton

Shelton has maneuvered throughout the current indie film renaissance, although she’s avoided the “mumblecore” tag that’s been thrown at some of her contemporaries. That’s because her films feel much more fully realized, straddling the lines of comedy and drama and existing as realistic visions of the contemporary human experience. Her characters are often lost and searching for answers, and they find them in surprising places — and with extraordinary guides helping them along the way. She has gained more and more prominence with every feature she directs, and has slipped into the TV world in recent years, directing episodes of comedies like New Girl, The Mindy Project, and Fresh Off the Boat.

Jill Soloway

Soloway’s career started in television, where she blossomed as a writer and producer on HBO’s Six Feet Under, Grey’s Anatomy, The United States of Tara, and How to Make It in America. In 2013, she made her directorial debut with the film Afternoon Delight, which follows a frustrated stay-at-home mom whose attempts to liven up her life result in an unlikely friendship with a young stripper. Her most recent achievement came with the critically lauded Amazon series Transparent, which she based on her own parent’s coming out as transgender. Having already earned a Golden Globe for Best Comedy Series and eleven Emmy nominations, Transparent has proven to be Soloway’s breakthrough work and garnered her A-list status as an accomplished writer, producer, and director.

Penelope Spheeris

While Spheeris claim to fame may be directing two beloved adaptations of TV properties (Wayne’s World was a smash hit, and her big-budget version of The Little Rascals remains a classic among grown-up Millennials), her early work is perhaps her most notable, particularly her trilogy of documentaries following bands that made up Los Angeles’ underground punk rock scene known as The Decline of Western Civilization, which remain indelible depictions of counter-culture movements that rose up in the wake of the Reagan era.